


Short Story Long

by etal



Category: Shelter (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 20:37:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7522249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etal/pseuds/etal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little bit of Shaun thinking and writing before and after Zach's visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Short Story Long

 

_He’s wearin' a sweet suit and he’s gonna kick his ass._

Nope. Delete.

 _He’s wearin' a sweet suit and he’s a fighter, goddammit, he’s gonna kick his…._ whose? Name? Drew’s? Dan’s? _ass, if it kills him._

Delete.

_He shifts from foot to foot, trying to get the measure of his opponent’s strength. Glancing down, he notices that his suit is frayed at the cuffs. Dan gives him an appraising glance and smirks, “You think you can take me?”_

Shaun is tangled in his own sentences, weighed down by his own words, and he can’t punch through to the end of this scene. It had all been so clear that day when Zach had interrupted him and dragged him out into the sunshine but the distraction had lasted and clouded up his vision and now the story is lying there, inert and undecided and, actually, boring. He has no sense of what the characters want from each other, why they’re in the same space, the same universe. He doesn’t even know what they should be wearing. That suit he’d seen so clearly now just seems as pretentious and fake as his prose.

His fingers rest on the keyboard, like they’re trying to fake it too, pretending to write while he tries to summon the feeling he had when he was in that scene. His character was all ready to take on anything that came his way, cool and masterful, right? He had style and a suit and he was going to… yeah, maybe not.

Shaun kicks up off his chair again and lets his gaze go out to the ocean, and his mind retune to Zach. Zach’s art, now, that was careful and intricate, really controlled, like a good story, but it was full of movement too, _alive_. Zach’s sketches are so fucking good; it’s criminal that he’s stuck here wasting it all. Shaun gives up fighting the underlying, shameful, basic thought: he just wants Zach so much, always has. Zach at 15, scrappy and bouncing with nervous energy, or on Graduation day, when no-one from his family came and Shaun had wanted so badly to hold him and smooth away all those jagged edges.

When the banging on the door starts his first thoughts are tangled into his story, like it’s the beginning of a fight, and he starts up, ready to face it. He tamps down the little flash of hope that it could be Zach, allows himself a 3 second fantasy that it’s the cops here to tell him that Larry is dead in a pile-up, and pads downstairs.

 Zach’s knocking but it’s only a marginally more polite version of his usual breaking and entering and once Shaun swings the door open he’s in and on him. There’s not an inch of playfulness in it, Zach is deadly serious about this, and it’s like it could only be this way, turning up and throwing himself wordlessly, wholly, at Shaun.

10 seconds after he opened the door, and they’re shucking off their clothes and it’s crazy to be going from 0 to 100 with no warning, but Shaun just goes with it, catching the wave of Zach’s passion and letting it sweep him upstairs and beach him back on his own bed, gasping for breath and ready for more.

They’re tangled in the sheets, one over the other, back again, the sweetest of kisses keeping them locked together and Shaun could stay like this, just touching Zach’s mouth with his own, finding his lips again and again, slipping his tongue inside to find the smooth heat there but Zach is demanding more, surging in a focused rush against Shaun and his eyes are alight, pleading and determined. He doesn’t know what the hell to do, so Shaun pushes him down, stills him for a moment, then kisses down his body, ready to stop if Zach says so but pretty sure he’s not going to.

Zach has been wordless up to this point, when Shaun hesitates just a moment, his mouth about to open over Zach’s dick and says, “OK? Zach, you OK with this?” even though Zach’s open sprawl and barely contained shudders are answer enough, he doesn’t reply, but later, when Shaun kneels back up and more carefully, controlledly, rubs a finger down behind Zach’s balls and further, down and dippling into him, crooking to make him gasp and twist, Zach loses it and starts to talk. There aren’t many words in his surfer vocab capable of dealing with it at first, “jesus, dude you fuckin’…’ but he’s pushing down further, asking for more and when Shaun leaves him long enough to grab the lube, making way for another finger and a longer push and drag, he gets something more, “Shaun, oh my god, Shaun Shaun, do it, please, that feels.. been waiting…’

“I know, I know… darlin’…” he nearly catches himself on that one but Zach doesn’t shy off away from it, he smiles, curls up into the endearment as Shaun bends his head down to Zach’s dick again, taking him in, fingers sliding deep in to make it as good as he can, so that Zach will always remember this moment, this night, just like Shaun already knows he will himself.

 “Mornin’”

He makes a half-hearted attempt to draw Zach back down but it isn’t really a question or a demand, more a promise that he’s welcome back anytime. Zach is so epically beautiful in the slanted morning light, scooping up his clothes, scrubbing a hand through his hair, shooting Shaun little befuddled smiles and glances; he’s shy, can’t quite hold Shaun’s eyes just yet.

This isn’t a happy ending, he knows that. Zach has a lot of life out there waiting for him and making demands of him and there might not be room for Shaun in it. The kid might change his mind. He might never come back. But as he hovers, trying to leave, hoodie bunched in his nervous hands, he comes back for one last kiss, and one more, and says “see you later?” in a soft, hopeful voice. Shaun doesn’t even bother to reply, just opens his eyes wider, like, ‘der… yeah.’

He takes a few minutes, hands behind his head, just remembering and smiling and hoping Zach is feeling the same afterglow. Then he reaches under the bed and pulls his laptop towards him.

Shaun isn’t a chaotic improviser when it comes to writing. He starts with a plan, thinks through structures and networks of motivation and mirroring. The fighter in the sweet suit was on a narrative arc towards weary disillusionment, albeit a weary disillusionment that Shaun was kinda hoping would leave room for a couple of sequels.

But that’s not what he wants to write right now: he wants to find the twist, the sudden change that’s not fantastical but completely in keeping with the story up to that point. He wants to explain the way life surprises you, the way it ignores you for a while, lets you sit gazing at the horizon as if everything’s been done and nothing new will ever happen again, then comes banging at your door in the night, all kisses and clutches and hands at your belt buckle.

Shaun will fight to keep that life inside with him now. He wants to do everything with Zach, he wants to fuck him on these sheets and the thought of Zach letting him, taking him in, his dark-honey body opening, flushed cheeks, slack lips, making him beg again, means Shaun has to swing a pillow round to rest his laptop on over his hardening dick. He wants to hold him and kiss him on the beach, take the boards out and kiss him on the waves, salty lips and squeaky wetsuits – but he wants Zach’s words too, his ideas and his drawings, his problems and their solutions.

He taps out the words, and what do you know, they come easily.

_He’s wearing a sweet suit and he’s gonna kick his ass._

_He takes a few steps forward, so does Dan, like some cowboy showdown. Dan raises a hand warily. “I don’t want any trouble.”_

_"Oh, I think you do.” Without waiting for a reply, he steps forwards, grabs Dan by his t-shirt collar and hauls him in for a kiss._


End file.
